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Christie Hoerneman

Australia—a land of kangaroos, koala bears, 12-foot earthworms, killer seashells, and Prime Ministers who disappear in the surf—provides a rich adventure for those who are not afraid to possibly encounter some of the world’s deadliest creatures and forbidding terrain. Bill Bryson, author of the bestseller A Walk in the Woods, invites us on his treks throughout the Land Down Under from the comfort of our own homes (away from the deadly box jellyfish and toxic caterpillars) in his book, In a Sunburned Country.

The entire town knew that the Vicario twins were planning on murdering Santiago Nasar, and nobody stopped the brutal murder. Determined to understand how a man liked by the town and his murderers could be killed without anyone stopping it, the narrator sets out 27 years after the event to talk to the townspeople and reconstruct what happened that fateful day in Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Part fantasy, part romance, Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson is a time travel novel featuring Richard Collier, who falls in love with a turn of the century actress and travels back in time to meet her.

In 1971, Richard, on finding out that he is suffering from terminal cancer, embarks on a road trip from Los Angeles to Denver. On the way, he stops at a historic hotel on the coast in San Diego where he sees a play program from the late 1800s and falls in love with the woman pictured on the front. Captivated by her beauty, Collier researches the actress, Elise McKenna and finds out that she never married, had an overbearing manager named W.F. Robinson, and that she had a brief encounter in 1896 with a mysterious man at the hotel he is currently staying at. Throughout his research, he realizes that he has fallen deeply in love with the woman, and convinces himself that he is the mysterious man with whom Elise had an affair.

What if you had never noticed the small things in life? Having lived a privileged life defined by ceremonies and duties, would you have had the time to notice the subtle changes in behavior of the people around you when upset, worried, or flustered? And what would make you start noticing? This is the premise for the brilliantly witty audiobook The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett.

In this audiobook, richly-narrated by the author, the Queen, having never read for pleasure, stumbles upon a bookmobile outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and feels duty bound to check out a book. While she dutifully finishes the first book she checks out, she feels duty bound once again to check out a second book, which is the one that captures her attention and leads to her rabid consumption of books. Helping the Queen on this journey is Norman, a kitchen boy in the palace, who is promoted to page after his encounter with the Queen in the bookmobile. With Norman as her accomplice, the Queen is introduced to an array of authors and begins to see the world through other people’s eyes.

Arnaldur Indridason's Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller, the first of a series starring Inspector Erlendur, is a gripping crime novel set in the insular world of Reykjavik, Iceland, where the climate is unforgiving and murder is a relatively rare phenomenon.

An elderly man, Holberg, is found murdered in his city flat, and, unlike most murders in Iceland that are crimes of passion, Erlendur and his colleagues Sigrinudur Oli and Elinborg quickly realize that this is not going to be a typical murder investigation, especially since the only clues are a cryptic note stating, “I am HIM” and the photograph of a young girl’s grave.

In postwar, poverty-stricken Rome, a man, hoping to support his desperate family with a new job, loses his bicycle, his main means of transportation for work. With his wide-eyed young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief.

In the provided clip, Academy award winning director Martin Scorsese explains in his documentary "My Voyage to Italy," why "The Bicycle Thieves" was an influential film for him.

Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it.

Rossellini's "Rome, Open City" along with other Italian Neorealist films of the 1940s and 1950s had a major impact on Academy Award winning director Martin Scorsese, who talked about their impact on his life in the video clip provided.

Are you traveling to a foreign country and are interested in learning some basic phrases in the language of the country you are traveling to? Or have you heard other people speaking a foreign language and felt a bit jealous that you don’t speak another language? Or do you need to improve your English? Or have you seen a television commercial trying to sell you a language course for a lot of money? The Central Rappahannock Regional Library has the perfect solution to take care of all your foreign language needs for free!

Mango Languages is a database that, as a library patron, you have access to for free 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To begin with, you can start using the database as a guest; however, if you plan on using Mango on several occasions, you will want to create a profile (all you need to do this is your library card number and an email address). By creating a profile, you can track your progress and leave a course in the middle and come back to the spot where you left off. Mango offers three levels of instruction for most of the languages that they offer. The quickest level to make your way through is the basic course. Mango Basic provides a quick introduction to a language and culture through the attainment of everyday conversational skills. Mango Complete 1.0 and 2.0 takes you even further than Mango Basic with more vocabulary and grammar skills, while still maintaining a focus on conversational skills. Each of these levels will help you to explore new and exciting languages; however, they will only give you a conversational grasp of the language rather than provide fluency.